Last year, Governor-General David Hurley’s speech on Harmony Week said that diversity is “one of our greatest strengths”. With more than 300 ethnicities and 120 faiths, the multicultural society of Australia is indeed worth celebrating. So what exactly is Harmony Day?
Officially, Harmony Day is the culminating activity of Harmony Week, which aims to bring together people of different backgrounds and recognise the various cultures found in the country. It is celebrated every 21 March. This also marks the day in the 1960s when the police opened fire on a peaceful, planned protest in Sharpeville, South Africa, killing 69 and wounding 180 people. For the rest of the world, 21 March is known as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, as declared by the United Nations.
What started as a commemoration to fight and end racism turned into a celebration of diversity in Australia when the government initiated Harmony Day in 1999. What might be wrong with this, you ask? It could be seen as a blatant (and literal) erasure of the historical events that happened that day. The government website may say that Harmony Day is about “inclusiveness, respect and a sense of belonging for everyone,” but the disregard for the unjust treatment during apartheid screams exclusion and disrespect.
In the past, grade school students from St Gabriel’s Catholic Primary School in Reservoir, Victoria, created an online talking ebook. They expressed what a world of harmony means to them. “Peace, forgiving, no murdering, no fighting,” a girl said before the one-minute mark of the video. Forgiveness comes with time, but we should never forget. The simple act of renaming 21 March leads to people forgetting what the day should be about. While we should be able to celebrate the melting pot that Australia has become, we should also make sure that the events we hold and put up on social media reflect what happens on the ground.
Filipino-Australians are no strangers to racism. Especially not when our home country has been colonised many a time. A lot, if not most, of immigrants move to their chosen country for the betterment of their lives; Filipino immigrants are no exception. The work opportunities and living conditions here alone are a clincher. As a collective society, Filipinos would make the most of Harmony Week. We have so much to showcase! But we cannot discount the fact that if it were any other day, we would still face discrimination on the streets.
At the beginning of this month, Glenda Ballantyne and Vincent Giarrusso’s preliminary analysis, “Asian Australian Experiences of Racism During the COVID‑19 Pandemic in Victoria,” was published online. Their study revealed that in Victoria, Asian Australians experienced an increase in levels of racism, both online and in person. They also found that the salience of ‘everyday’ racism was “more common and more pernicious” and was even reflected in the Australian Human Rights Commission’s relaunch of its ‘Racism. It Stops With Me’ campaign, which then included a focus on subtle forms of racism.
That, of course, could be a reflection of institutional racism, and so our call should be for officials to be clearer on their stance against racism through legislation. But the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 was suspended and reinstated before, and now we still have the issue of Harmony Day vs International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Unfortunately, the decisions of the Australian government regarding the matter at hand could be described as inconsistent.
Scott McDougall, Queensland’s Human Rights Commissioner, said in a 2021 article that the government was cautioned “not to use ‘anti-racism’ as a message, as that would be divisive… [but] it’s not divisive to call out racism. It is divisive to sweep it under the rug in the name of ‘harmony’ instead of working to eliminate it.” His stance was straightforward: We should be proactive when it comes to racism.
Is Australia really tone-deaf on racism? The term harmony has a number of definitions according to the Cambridge dictionary, two of which are: (1) the combination of separate but related parts in a way that uses their similarities to bring unity; and (2) the situation in which people live or work happily together without any big problems. One could say racism is a big problem and that unity has not been achieved when we still have opposing views on Harmony Day.
But harmony also has different types: the consonant and the dissonant. According to The Open University, dissonant harmony is a “combination of pitches in a chord [that] are relatively harsh and grating… often difficult sounds to listen to, and so the ear will seek out the resolution in the chords that follow.” It might sound jarring at first, but you will soon find harmony in it. We might find ourselves in a stalemate now, but if we can listen with both ears and an open mind, we might just find the answer to a balanced position in eliminating racism and celebrating diversity at the same time.
So please go ahead and celebrate how far we have come. At the time of writing, there are 16 events lined up in Victoria if you visit the Home Affairs calendar webpage. Celebrations of cuisine with food trucks and small business stalls (even cooking demonstrations!) are set to ensue. There would be art exhibitions, documentary feature film screenings and Q&A, an outdoor concert. And of course, there would be educational workshops, games and cultural performances. But while you’re at it, please keep in mind those who sacrificed for us to be able to have this celebration. And remember that the fight isn’t over. Unity in diversity may not have been fully achieved yet, but it is certainly not impossible.
